Gordon Cucullu on N.K. Tunnels

Well, I admit it. I’m jealous that GI Korea scooped me on covering Cucullu’s lecture at the Rayburn House Office Building last Friday, which I had to miss because of the demands of my day job.

Fortunately, I did run into Gordon at a meeting the evening before, and I was able to join a group where he was being shown ground-penetrating radar images of North Korean tunnels that purportedly run beneath (among other places) Kunsan Air Base, at the extreme southern end of the peninsula. Those showing him included a conservative South Korean clergyman, whom I gather to be Rev. Kim Han-Shik, who sprang for the GPR equipment, and an alleged witness who claimed that the sound of people shouting “Suryong!” at 3:30 every morning — not to mention the blasting — disturbed his sleep. Yes, he claimed he could actually understand what they were saying. Both men charge the South Korean government of ignoring evidence of continued tunneling. I asked if they’ve ever managed to intercept any tunnels, and they answer that they have not. They note that in many of the areas nearer the surface, it’s easy to fill in the loess in such a way as to make it virtually undistinguishable from the undisturbed soil. Perhaps, but not so for the areas of solid rock they’d undoubtedly have had to blast through.

This article on ground penetrating radar states that it can’t typically penetrate deeper than 30 feet, so it’s probably impossible to use it with success anywhere but near the exit points, and deep valleys that intersect the tunnels. Range may be somewhat deeper for soft, moist, conductive soils.

(I gather that Rev. Kim is not connected to previous searchers who’ve tried to find tunnels through “dowsing,” which unlike GPR is completely unscientific. Some googling for “Kim Han Shik” turns up plenty of results, including the fact that someone with the same very common Korean name ran for president in 1997 on the “Right Politics for a Right Country” ticket.)

Global Security has much more on Kim Il Sung’s orders to tunnel into the South, and how his Army worked to carry his orders out. The South Koreans admit to having intercepted three tunnels, most recently in 1989. That tunnel is 173 meters underground; like the two others that have been intercepted, it is far too deep for GPR detection.

This is still my all-time favorite Korea tunnel story.